A few weeks ago, I visited the house of a family I had known for some time. Their father had passed on at the age of one hundred, and I went to pay my respects. One person there reminded me of the time they had helped me to get a bed, some decades ago. Those were simpler times in Jordan. The neighborhood was still on the outskirts of Amman. It was undeveloped, shorn of the apartment blocks that now crowd out the sun. Goats roamed freely among the olive groves. The invasion of American goods and the internet was in the distant future. That bed was also a simple affair. It was a board of wood, balanced on two wooden cinderblocks of the type that a lumberjack might use to chop wood with his long- handled ax. I reflected on those simpler times. Possessions were few. But, most of all, connectivity was non-existent. We had time and space to worship, reflect and think. Tech played no part in treading the spiritual path. It just wasn't needed.